The present invention utilizes a horizontal rotating drum in which organic waste material in hard or soft form is shredded and ground in a hopper before being introduced in an inlet opening of the drum which is constantly in rotation. Oxygen in the air surroundings of the drum is introduced therein through the hopper during normal use of the composter apparatus and surrounding air in an enclosure for the composter is exhausted. Such horizontal drum composters are known in the art but these known composters have several disadvantages in that many of these utilize screens to divide the drum into sub-composting compartments and the drums are oriented at an angle whereby the compost material can move from an inlet end to an outlet end during rotation of the drum. For the material to move through the compartments, it needs to decompose to pass through the screens and often the inlet end of the drum will clog up with material which backs up to the inlet end for the reason that the decomposition has not sufficiently taken place and cannot pass through the screens and backs up. The material also clogs the screens and requires constant servicing to unclog. Accordingly, these composters have not proven to be efficient.
Other rotating drum systems work with forced air through-flow and again are provided with sieves against which material to be treated is forced by suitable means such as screw conveyors. Many of these sieve walls have a large central opening. The sieves also have a common mesh size and this implies that no large size particles are present at the discharge side of the drum. Again, drum constructions have been found to be expensive to construct and require constant maintenance and repair due to sieve malfunction.
The treatment of organic waste material also often requires several manipulations for the disposal thereof. For example, organic waste is usually collected in large establishments such as food processing plants or large grocery stores where the organic waste is placed in special bins or bags and is picked up by transparent vehicles to be brought to a disposal site, such as a landfill where it may be buried. The cost of transporting and disposing large volumes of organic waste has escalated in recent years due to increase in labour cost and transportation costs. Such organic waste also is not put to valuable use such as for the fertilization of soil whereby to be recycled into nature. When organic waste is used as landfills, it is slowly decomposted and if such is buried while being contained in plastic bags, the decomposition will take much longer and contamination results due to the use of plastics material. The odors released from these sites are also a nuisance to the environment.
It is known to dispose organic waste from food handling facilities where the organic waste is firstly ground in a mill and mixed with water before being discharged into a storage tank which is buried into the ground next to the facility for storage purpose. Periodically a vehicle having a suction hose removes the waste from the storage tank and transports it to a disposal site where the waste material is tilled into the soil for decomposition by soil organisms. Such disposal systems are used in commercial applications.